Lenovo Thinkpad T410 Owner's Lounge

@ all

what is you power consumption on idle/web browsing? (dicrete, integrated)
have you noticed any difference between original Lenovo and your Cleaninstall?

mine is 10W, cant get below.

On my 56Wh battery I get at least 2:30.
Light browsing (more reading than loading) should be good for 3 to 3,5 hrs
Only reading (eg PDF) should be possible for >4hrs (not tested yet, maybe on sunday)

mfg

 

10 watts is great. You're not likely to do much better than that.

Here's a browsing session I recorded just out of curiosity. I think the power profile was Balanced.

Wifi was off. I have integrated graphics, 520M CPU, 4 GB of memory, 500 MB 7200 drive, Win7-64 browsing through a gigabit ethernet.



On Edit: This was a short browsing session. The higher power draw in the beginning is the boot-up, followed by browsing and then a shut-down

 

Can anyone with a T410s confirm whether their screen flickers when set at below max brightness?

I know people have reported this issue with the T400/s but how about anyone with a T410/s?

Thanks!

 

Thanks for the response. +1 Rep

That's a little bit less than I expected but I guess thats what you get without switchable graphics

Again, does anyone know how long it takes for the laptop to arrive (from the day you ordered) with the DHL Delivery?

 

If you need to extend your battery life i would recommend you to go for a 6-Cell and 9-Cell slice batteries. 9+9 Cell would result in 3 kg , but probably 10-12hrs of battery life.

Since i am using my T410 mainly as desktop replacement i ordered the 6-Cell for oocasional use at home out of the Minidock. And a 9-Cell , if i need really reliable 5h on travel.

One guy in german TP-Forum reported 3:40 to 4h with integrated grafics, for usage scheme you requested (contious webbrowsing/word/pdf). So maybe you could get happy with that solution and save money on additional battery.

 

Can't wait for mine to get here. Ordered my T410 on the 16th. Initial shipping estimate of Apr 29th. Ships on the 23rd!!!!!

Delivery on the 26th!!! Good job Lenovo!

Will post a brief review guys!

 

Sorry for the noobish question, but what is a slice battery?

And also, is there a way of taking off the lenovo tools stuff on the taskbar? I don't have mine yet but I keep seeing it in reviews and it just bothers me :S

 

Disable those utilities upon startup.

 

Where are you measuring 10W and under what battery plan?

This sounds quite low to me compared to mine.

 

its my Win7 "Energy saver" profile customized for min energy consumption.
WLAN is on, Display at 5/15
AccessConnections and PowerManager services deactivated (2W)
Everything which is unnecessary for me (Webcam, Fierewire, WWAN and so on) deactivated in BIOS

However PM is still installed, but not active; so i can manage my battery charge threshholds and see how much power i am using

The problem is that one need 30s-1min to arrive at 10-11W, but only miliseconds to go up to 18-20W
I'd be pretty happy to lower my typical power consumption to 8W in idle and max of 14W while browsing, but by now i am quite pessimistic

This is my last hope http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=478507
mfg

 

You might be able to lower power using the additional features within Windows Power Options --> Additional Plan settings --> Change Plan Settings --> Change Advanced Power Settings. Some of these are "shared" with Lenovo Power Manager, but some appear to be additional. For example, Processor power management... Minimum Processor state... On battery doesn't seem to have a corresponding entry in the Lenovo tool; same for Maximum. Can't say for sure whether these have any effect, though.

Another thread elsewhere referenced the Windows "powercfg" evaluation tool, which I used months ago and thought was valuable. There's a good tutorial here.

Your biggest gain may be to turn off Intel Turbo Boost, i.e. CPU performance = Low | Lowest in Lenovo Power Manager and/or the BIOS.

 

You could also turn off one of the cores on your CPU. That should cut the TDP of the CPU in half (35W -> 17.5W), meaning that it'll essentially cut-off your maximum.

Here's a how-to:
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/616-multicore-cpu-how-to-disable-a-core

 

Not sure about that.

First, Win7/Arrandale combination is able off turning of a core if in idle, afaik.
On the other hand i suppose that turning off a core in Windows would result in no use of that core, but the would still be active.

I'll test that

Anyway it isn't a good solution, since one have to switch between mobile and desktop modes manually.

 

If I read that correctly, it applies to Boot only (take a look at the context). I have this set on my machine to 4, from 1, which does seem to quicken the boot, but doesn't affect normal operations.

 

Well, some time ago I did something similar under Linux on my Dell XT tablet (ULV C2D @ 1.33 GHz) and it shaved off 0.5W from idling alone (that's what one core eats while idling apparently).

Now, if Arrandale can do so dynamically at first sight one might think that's not necessary. But then, Windows rarely goes to complete idle mode. If you try it out, do tell me how it works out.

 

(on AC) 13W on idle and 20W turned off, so it does not work

 

About a month ago I got my t410 in the mail, but it was only today (while I was trying to clean it) that i realized that I had a "creaky" laptop. If I press down on the area below the speakers/next to the touch pad, it feels really loose and it creaks. I never had a problem like this with my t60 so this is pretty annoying.

 

Interesting, so many people complaining about build quality nowadays... Makes me really wonder whether I should go Lenovo or not...

I currently have the Dell Latitude XT2 which is probably Dell's most solidly built computer ever (no creaking, flexing, anywhere). However, I had the XT first generation before and that had 2 major malfunctions so I am not really sure I want to continue with Dell. I've had a T21 and T41 previously and loved both. But is Lenovo really better?

XT2 vs T410s - what do you think (in terms of reliability only, ignore the tablet part)?

 

My brother's T410 arrived today - I'm typing this on it. It's very nice, the keyboard is fantastic, much nicer than the stupid one on my 13" MacBook Pro.

The build quality is excellent, but not as good as the Unibody MacBook Pro with it's 3-piece enclosure (lid, main section, base).

I'm also impressed by the screen, while it's not as nice as the one on my MBP or my mom's Dell XPS 16, it is much better than other late model business notebooks I have used.

I am having one minor issue, and that is that Windows (7 HP, 64bit) is reporting that there is 4GB of RAM, but only 3.87GB usable. Any ideas as to what causes this? It has the NVS 3100M, so there shouldn't be a fixed allocation of system memory for the video card.

 

This is normal. There is still a certain amount of reserved memory, even with discrete graphics.

 

I don't have it on my other Windows 7 computers. Maybe it's the Intel Graphics still being there, even though the current drivers don't support switching (curiously, on the box the specs had "SW graphics" listed).

 

Hopefully lenovo will release some sort of switchable graphics in the near future. Maybe NVIDIA Optimus or something.

 

Also, I'm just curious, how long does Lenovo normally take to ship this laptop?

I got the 2 business day delivery option and customized it so shouldn't it arrive in around 12 days (10 business days for customization + 2 shipping). I ordered on the 21st and I would really like it to arrive before or on the 5th of May. Do you think that's possible?

 

I believe I posted this earlier but I ordered mine on a Monday and I had to add my shipping address to my credit card. I saw that it had shipped the next Monday and I had received it by Wednesday or 9 days later from the day I ordered it. And I live on the East Coast of the US. Hopefully you'll receive it on May 5th.

 

<delete> duplicate

 

Random comments - Days 3 through 6 into owning a T410

For the most part, I've been pretty happy with the new laptop. I keep the laptop on about 23 hours each day using AC power and streaming an Ethernet connection.

Day 3, noticed when running ThinkVantage, the warranty began on the day before they shipped it out of Hong Kong. So I lost the first three days of the policy. Not a deal breaker, but an fyi to everyone.

Around the early evening, for about 10 sec, the screen went blank and then came back on as the taskbar stated the NVIDIA card was turned off and then back on. I was on the AC adapter and there were no power surges in the home. Ironically, i was searching the Apple website when it occurred. The problem occurred one time and has not reemerged.

Day 4, the webcam functions well enough for what I need, a decent clear real time picture. The bad news is the internal mic is really poor. I'm literally scrunched near the keyboard for anyone to hear me (and yes, I experimented with all the SmartAudio and Sound settings). The most hilarious comment about my mic, "You sound like you're hosting a 1950's radio broadcast." Note, the problems occurred using Yahoo Messenger 10 and Paltalk Express.

Now before one decides to purchase a new mic, be aware that for Win 7 Pro 64 users, there are a lot of online comments about low volume, headset static, Windows can't recognize mic, and random sound drops by the headset where it works five min and then nothing. So beware before forking out the money for either a Bluetooth or USB mic bec I get the feeling MSFT hasn't settled on a standard error free driver for a mic to work on a 64-bit operating system. In any case, my new Logitech G330 USB mic arrives next week, since I couldn't find anyone who could wholeheartly recommend a specific Bluetooth make and model number.

On a system restart, would like to remove Windows Live Messenger from the autostart taskbar, but haven't found where it's coming from.

Day 5, it seems IE 8.0 has some bugs since on five occasions (twice on amazon, twice on yahoo finance, once on newegg) the browser would pop up an error message that IE had stopped and would reload the tab. While I'm thinking all I need to do is clear the history under Tools, Internet Options, I would have thought this error was already fixed in say version 7.0.

Sometimes Adobe Acrobat 9.0 won't recognize .pdf links in IE 8.0 as I was on the irs.gov website to download forms and manuals and a blank tab would open without the .pdf showing. While some might think its the source website, the same problem randomly occurred once on barrons.

I've had to slow my typing speed down, in order for the keyboard to keep up and not miss keystrokes. However, I enjoy the keyboard, especially the palm rests bec of my long hands and have typed nonstop for four hours without any discomfort. I likely won't type 90 wpm error free ever on the T410, but 80 wpm is doable.

Got the RAM up usage up to 3.8GB. No doubt this will be in the lower 6-6.5GB range five years from now.

Day 6, at some point, I want to learn to use the Energy Star power option since on Maximum Performance i'm averaging about 31 watts which might drain the 9-cell a lot faster than it should.

The 1440 x 900 screen is good for watching Hulu as first run television shows (480 resolution) show no degradation. However, watching videos on youtube is another matter. Even 360 resolution youtube videos can appear pixilated. Whether it's the way youtube encodes their videos, it's almost as if Lenovo was trying to tell us, you're using this for business, right?

When connecting an external VGA monitor, the resolution is a little blurry as my ten year old Sony 17" Trinitron defaults both the laptop and the CRT to 1024 x 768. I'm thinking, this laptop is designed to work with current flat panel displays or projectors and that the VGA port might go the way of the 3.5" floppy drive within ten years. When you disconnect the CRT, remember to change your display setting back to the laptop's default.

Despite my nit pics, I'm enjoying the T410. But the real tests are coming, full wireless, with Skype conferencing, and 9-cell battery power only. Let's see how well the T410 handles on the road usage.

 

OK, now something weird has happened with my order. There isn't any ship date and it reads:
If no ship date is given above, there may be an issue with your order. If you would like more information on the status, please call 866-426-0013.

If I can't get it by the 5th of May then I might was well cancel my order since that's why I ordered the laptop - It would be here soon. If I don't get it before then I'll have to wait atleast 2 months and by then something better will be out so I guess I might just cancel my order.

 

Just signed up here and just ordered my t410.

Lots of good information here, glad to join the party.

Has anyone found a good carrying sleeve for the t410 yet?
With 6 or 9 cell...

I ordered the 6 but I might go ahead and buy a 9 as well after reading most of the info here. So either way! Any good cases yet?

 

First time poster here. Ordered my cto t410 on 4/19, shipped on 4/23. Still waiting on it to get delivered here and can't stand the wait! Have no clue what's going on with UPS but my tracking info said it cleared customs on 4/26 but still no estimated delivery date. Gave em a call and they said that theres a delay because it's packaged together with a very large shipment from lenovo so it takes longer. Just my luck!

Heres what my tracking says so far:

US 04/26/2010 7:00 A.M. CARRIER AND CUSTOMS RELEASED
CN 04/23/2010 9:30 P.M. DEPARTURE
04/23/2010 9:00 P.M. RECEIVED INTO UPS SCS POSSESSION
US 04/27/2010 10:30 A.M. ARRIVAL
04/24/2010 12:44 A.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

 

I'm either ordering the Waterfield sleeve or Zeroshock III sleeve. I'm just trying to figure out if the 9cell T410 would fit into those sleeves and what size they'd have to be.

 

Check your IE add-ons. IE itself is solid, so check for updates to Flash, Acrobat and any toolbars you use.

A BIOS update fixes this - make sure you have the latest BIOS loaded.

RAM Usage is irrelevant on Windows 7 as it uses all 'free' memory to cache data.

A low res video looks pixilated on all PCs. Use the YouTube 720 HD link on each video if available. You may want to try Flash 10.1 RC2 if you want improved Flash video playback performance. Or wait until it comes out properly. You'll find it uses less CPU therefore better battery life.

VGA does this... connect an external monitor digitally for best performance (DVI/DP).

 

hi,

somehow i've managed to kill my OSD-App, so now my Fn+F combinations do not work properly. Means, the function works, but i don't get an indication on the screen and therefore i don't get a choice which "wireless" to turn on, or ext. display pattern and so on.

Tried to de/reinstall the hotkey service, no change

any ideas?

mfg

 

Hi,

I'm new to this forum (although I've been following for a while) and new to Lenovo as well. After doing my research, I went ahead and bought the T410, and I received it on 4/29. Still adjusting, both to the computer and the OS. My old laptop, although it served me well, was seriously outdated and I had been an XP user forever.

Few questions:
-The lights below the ethernet port, can they be switched off permanently. Kind of annoying how one is always blinking (what does that mean?), and I think they remain on even when comp is turned off.
-The light for the fingerprint reader is always on, even on battery power, and I think this is because I set it to start up when I swipe. Does it mean that it is draining battery power (however slightly)? Any way to turn that function off and use regular start up (pressing the power button and typing in psswd) when on battery power only?

I'm so tempted to play around and dig in deeper but I've got projects and finals around the corner, darn it. There are so many things I want to do before I can fully switch and use that as my main computer, and fingers crossed I didn't get a defective one because I've read plenty stories in this forum. Until then, still using my old one.

Thanks.

 

The lights: all PC ethernet ports have flashing lights when they are plugged in... so when in use, you're not going to be able to switch those off. You should be able to switch them off when 'off' though, although I can't say I've tried. Someone else might know the exact settings.

The fingerprint reader power is easier - go in the control panel and search for Lenovo Fingerprint Reader. In the settings you can switch off Power On Security. I did this as I had your concern about power drain too.

 

My advice is to focus on school. You'll have all summer to play around with your new toy

 

Laptop just got delivered, booted up and currently typing on it. I need some advice on what now should be done to increase battery life and maybe performance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks realwarder! I did that and it seems to do the trick.

You're right. I'm almost done, just a few weeks!

 

Hello everyone- I'm a new T410/Windows 7 Professional 64-bit owner and I have a quick question regarding the USB ports. I know one is always 'on' (with the yellow insert on the right); but the other three seem to be providing power to my external Western Digital portable hard drive. The HD is portable, so it's powered by the USB only. The HD light continually flashes even when the computer is in standby or powered off completely. This is driving me crazy and I spent about three hours trying to correct this without success. The drive powers off immediately with my old T60 running XP-Pro. I checked the BIOS and I couldn't find a setting for this and all of the device mgr settings indicate that the computer is free to shut down the usb port to save power. Also, the usb selective setting is enabled in the power manager.. Any ideas? Thank you in advance..

 

This is normal on most newish computers. If I remember correctly, disabling wake on USB stops power being provided to devices while in sleep/switched off.

 

Hi- Thank you for your response. I actually have the disable on wake setting set and it has no effect. I disabled the 'Always On' setting in the Bios. I had thought this option just referred to the USB on the right with the yellow insert. This setting does successfully disable the power for all four USB ports after entering shut down/sleep mode.

It seems like the 'Always On' setting pushes power to all four USB ports and not just the one with the yellow insert on the right side. It's full power to the yellow insert port and must be enough of a power trickle to the other three to power the external hard drive. I was hoping that the Yellow USB was independent and would be the only one with power and the remaining three could be turned off completely.

Does anyone know if this would be possible? Thanks.

 

I placed an order for a T410 on 4/28, but my order status is still stuck on "submitted". Is this normal?

 

Random comments - Days 7 through 13 owning a T410

Day 7 - took the T410 to the laundromat. On wifi & battery power for 50 min using 21 watts on custom Energy Star mode. Remaining battery at 80%. Loosely translates to 3 hr 45 min for 90% usage and 4 hr 10 min for complete discharge on the 9-cell with NVIDIA discrete. Mental note, laundromat's wifi (3.9MBps down / 800kbps up) is faster than Verizon.

Days 8-9, no problems, laptop on 23 hours each day and performing up to expectations.

Day 10 - of the three USB ports on the left side, the one on the lower left closest to the Ethernet port is a little loose. Meaning, while the other three USB ports have their devices locked snugly into the port, any USB device attached to this one could easily slip and fall out. The port works fine as I use it for the wireless mouse at home. On the road, its likely the one port I'll leave open.

Day 11- second time the LCD screen flickered and went black for 3-5 sec. Message in the taskbar stated the NVIDIA card went offline then back online. Was in IE 8.0 with 15 tabs open, quickly shuffling between tabs. Since its the second time its happened, thinking there's some conflict bet NVIDIA card and something else. Will try to keep it under 10 tabs and not switch bet sites so quickly to prevent a reoccurence.

Day 12 - adjusted a couple of settings in SmartAudio temporarily cured what I thought was a right speaker hardware problem. Was hearing a little crackle or screeching when listening to youtube videos or when sounds reached a certain octave. Problem has not reoccurred.

Day 13 - new headset arrived. Tested on the regular USB port and the Always On (yellow) port, mic functions and earphones are great on Yahoo Messenger 10. However, the new mic does NOT work on Paltalk Express. Testing the headset without the USB plug, the headphones function of the 3.5 mm mic/headphone combo jack works great as the T410 recognized the green plug (autoloaded the device driver) but the combo jack does not recognize the pink mic plug (nothing), so the mic won't work without the USB port on the T410. Sound quality using the headphone jack easily beats the laptop speakers and could literally make you deaf at only the 10 level (imagine the vol at 50 would necessitate a trip to the hospital emergency room).

Late this evening, had a 9-cell battery issue and posted a separate forum post where the full charge capacity dropped about 10% even though the remaining capacity was HIGHER. Within 5 min, one of the forum members answered with a solution and unless another member can state a better solution, I'll go with that after I save a system restore point.

 

They finally shipped my order!!

It's pretty late though. I ordered on the 21st of April and they shipped on the 7th of May. If I have the 2-day shipping will I get it by the 11th?

 

Can someone please answer this question for me?

Is the fingerprint reader on the T410 compatible with Win7's Biometric framework, i.e., can it be used to store passwords for Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc?

(background: I'm trying to make Dell feel like it's worth it to make the Latitude fingerprint readers compatible with Win7, and I think the best way to do it is to shove their competitor's ability in their face...)

 

It is compatible with the Win7 Biometric framework and shows up as a Biometric device.

However... an application also has to be aware of that to use it... Firefox isn't. Not sure about IE. Windows login definitely is.

If you use the full Thinkpad Client Security solution, it will provide fingerprint password management for IE/Firefox.

 

Just a note, the last time I checked (when I first got my T410 at the end of march), the fingerprint password management program didnt work with Firefox 3.6, I had to downgrade to 3.5 and then make some tweaks I found on google to make it work properly.

 

It's perfectly normal. It's gonna stay "submitted" until Lenovo ships the order, which, in my case, took about 3 weeks.

 

That sounds about right, but remember that the time that UPS picked up the shipment as well as customs are both variables in the shipping equation.

 

I'm frustratingly awaiting my order to be shipped out. That estimated shipping date on their site annoys me now
Should ship out by next week though, but I'm hoping for an early ship.

But yes you might get it by the 11th, unless your local routes take a day later.

 

Just a quick question. Is this: 2nd hard HDD Caddy Adapter For Thinkpad T400s T500 W500 - eBay (item 360260773168 end time May-11-10 18:41:05 PDT)

The correct ultrabay adapter for a T410? I'm also concerned about the little slant on the outer edge to match with the laptop's.

If not, if someone could point me toward which is a proper ultrabay for the T410? Thanks in advance.